The crew of a low-budget horror production experience a strange series of occurrences - including mysterious deaths - after they shoot a Ouija board scene.
Convinced she has developed a ‘yin-yang’ eye, lead actress Ouyang Xiaotong desperately tries to uncover why she can see otherworldly spirits, while the film’s director struggles to keep the crumbling production on schedule.
Like all Chinese horror movies, there is a moment in this film where you are convinced that, for once, the director has managed to make an actual scary, supernatural movie. Then the sobering reality of what you’re watching kicks in.
The movie tries really hard, including channeling popular J-horror films The Ring and Ju-on The Grudge in an attempt to convince the audience (or itself) that it’s a genuine horror film. Cursed video? Check! Long hair ghost in a white dress? Check! Gurgling sound of impending doom? Done and done!
But then the movie decides to go for the double ending. And that never works. The first explanation is great - it makes sense and is actually practical. The movie should have ended here. Instead, there are a few more unexplained deaths where they allude to something supernatural, only for a second ending to kick in that both makes very, very little sense at all and then completely destroys the film.
On top of the ending, there are some baffling technical issues with the film that exude ‘amateur’ movie vibes. A terrible green-screen effect used in a nighttime driving scene is ridiculously comical, which is then matched with a horrid scene when Ouyang’s spirit rises from a bed. The idea behind the effect makes sense (overlay two images, one of them slightly transparent, to give the effect of the spirit rising), but the problem is that the props in the scene move per shot, meaning there’s a series of strange double effects on the screen (like the pillow) that should have been masked out of the final shot!
The acting is also shocking at times, and I can’t work out if it’s because they’re filming a movie within this movie and it’s supposed to be campy, or if it’s just bad acting.
Iqiyi’s subtitles don’t do the movie any justice either. For every cleverly translated line that makes you think “oh, a real person translated this”, there are dozens of poorly translated lines that just scream “we used AI and hoped it did a good job”. Not a good effort from such a large media company.
This is kinda fun, but also super goofy and at times, ultra poor.
GENRE Chinese Horror Thriller
DIRECTOR Xingxing Wu
STARRING Zhenzhu Xue, Yuan Zhao
ORIGINAL TITLE 黑楼惊魂
ALTERNATIVE TITLE The Black Building
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN China
RELEASE DATE 30 July 2025
I've never heard of this one but I think the film within a film thing often works better when it's just one scene rather than stretched out.